We are the very people, the American Indians, who taught the world about freedom of the individual through representative government. That was largely taken from the Northeastern Indian peoples of North America, and we are all true to that form throughout this hemisphere; but the Iroquois Confederacy was the shining example of freedom for the individual through representative government.

Wounded Knee happened because Indian people wanted to survive as Indians and there wasn’t any way to survive, so we made a stand and made a statement, but now Indian people are beginning to rebound, rebound according to their [concept of] “Beauty.” And that’s really what’s necessary.to understand: Indian people have to become free again. That’s the real issue, whether we are free, not whether one man plotted against the United States of America or whether one man did this or that. Being an Indian means living with the land. And the only way we’ll be able to do that is to gain our freedom. And thats the only thing that people should talk about.

So I’d much rather get across the concept of freedom. It’s what’s important to Indian children. The only way you can be free is to know is that you are worthwhile as a distinct human being. Otherwise you become what the colonizers have designed, and that is a lemming. Get in line, punch all the right keys, and die.